The Beat

NBA LIVE 14: LIVE Season Mode Deep Dive

The primary driving force behind NBA LIVE 14 is to constantly bring you fresh new content that makes the game feel different every time you play. You’ve likely already heard about how CourtQ and Synergy Sports will affect player attributes and tendencies on a day-to-day basis, but that’s just scratching the surface of what we can do. With that in mind, let’s discuss how LIVE Season provides you with a brand-new experience every time you play NBA LIVE 14.

MAKE IT BIG

For those who want to relive those amazing highlight-reel plays again and again, NBA LIVE 14 offers BIG Moments. These challenges can range in length from a few seconds to a full quarter, and they’re always relevant to the conversations you’ll have with your friends the day after a game. Think SportsCenter highlights in video game form and you’ve got the basic idea.

Maybe Derrick Rose hits the buzzer-beater to win a huge game. We can then capture that point in time and turn it into a BIG Moment. What’s that? He already did that this year? Yeah, that’s why it’s one of our BIG Moments that you can play the second you put the disc in your console. Jump into the fourth quarter of the Bulls-Knicks game from Halloween with 10 seconds on the clock and take control of Rose as he attempts to sink the game-winner.

While some challenges like the above example may be player-locked, others allow you to take control of the whole team in order to succeed. So if the Bulls score 10 points in the last two minutes of the quarter, you may be challenged to pull off the same feat with Rose, Noah and the rest of the crew. This mixture of player-centric challenges and team-based objectives creates a nice variety of options, and offers something for just about everyone.

All your performances in BIG Moments are tracked on leaderboards, so you can see how you stack up against your friends. BIG Moments also offer HoopsNet XP, so completing them as well as NBA Rewind games is a great way to level up quickly and earn those LIVE Ultimate Team rewards.

So what if you watch a game one night, get super-excited to play the accompanying BIG Moment but can’t make it to your console the next day? No worries, we understand that sometimes life gets in the way of really important stuff like video games, so that’s why each day’s challenges are archived and playable at all times right from the BIG Moments timeline. You can always go back and pick up a challenge you missed when it was posted, or binge and catch up on a full week’s worth of games. Each BIG Moment is tied to that particular day’s rosters and CourtQ/Synergy Sports data, so the players will always behave the way they did at that moment in time.

BIG Moments aren’t the only way you can keep up with all the NBA action, as we have a whole other mode within LIVE Season that lets you stay step-for-step with your favorite squad.

RESET, REWIND, GO BACK IN TIME

NBA Rewind allows you to follow your favorite team (or teams) throughout the regular season, but with a LIVE twist. Every NBA Rewind game comes loaded with the day’s Synergy Sports and CourtQ data, so every player on the court will act just like he did in that night’s game. If Kevin Love was stretching the defense and knocking down the outside shot, then you’ll see him floating out to the perimeter and taking more jumpers than normal. If Roy Hibbert was a monster on the boards, then you’re going to have to work extra hard to keep him off the glass.

NBA Rewind is more than just a replay of the day’s games with updated player info, as each matchup features objectives to complete based on which team you control.

Let’s take the Hibbert example: if he grabbed 20 rebounds in a game and you choose to play as the Pacers, then your task may be to equal or exceed his production. However, if you’re playing as the opposition, you may be asked to limit the Indiana big man to 10 rebounds or less, or for your team’s center to grab more rebounds than Hibbert.

After each game, you are scored based on not only the final score, but also how well you did completing your objectives. The better you perform, the more points you earn, and the higher you’ll climb up the leaderboards. Completing objectives also earns you EA SPORTS HoopsNet XP, and leveling up your HoopsNet rank unlocks new LIVE Ultimate Team packs, so there’s plenty of incentive to play as many games as you can.

Another really cool element to the objectives in NBA Rewind is that they’re all generated dynamically by CourtQ and Synergy Sports. The database is smart enough to look at each game’s most notable performances, pull out the relevant data and turn it into a challenge. This level of automation allows for quicker updates, letting us post each game within a few hours of its real-world completion

KEEP IT SIMPLE

LIVE Season wouldn’t be terribly exciting if you had manually download every challenge you want, or wait for hours for updates. Thankfully, with the power of next-gen consoles, we’re able to push the challenges out as soon as they’re ready so they’re primed to download and update the moment you turn on your XBox One or PlayStation 4.

Whenever you boot up NBA LIVE 14, you’ll see a screen showing you exactly how many items CourtQ updated, including all NBA Rewind games and BIG Moments. From there, all you need to do is head into the LIVE Season menu and pick what you want to play. It’s as seamless as it can be, letting you jump straight into a game without having to wait around.

Hopefully you enjoyed this look at LIVE Season and are as excited about playing the content as we are to make it! We can’t wait to bring you new content and challenges every single day of the NBA season.

Fans in North America can pick up NBA LIVE 14 on Tuesday, November 19, for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. NBA LIVE 14 will also be available worldwide on November 22 for Xbox One, and November 29 for PS4.